


The B-Sides

by girlbookwrm



Series: The Hundred Year Playlist [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, BAMF Peggy Carter, Blood and Gore, Deaf Clint Barton, James Montgomery Falsworth IS james bond tho, Nightmares, Peggy teaches Steve to Fight and I Will Fight You If You Try To Tell Me Otherwise, Steve can’t be killed and that’s actually nightmare fuel if you think about it, as much as I could stand to write anyway because I am a wuss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-07-04 16:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm/pseuds/girlbookwrm
Summary: This might be Steve's story, but it's not about him.aka let's take a hot second to shine a big ole spotlight on everyone who isn't Steve.





	1. Peggy Carter: Or An Angel

**Author's Note:**

> These are companion pieces to my series, The Hundred Year Playlist. But if you haven't read that, then it's just a series of one-shots about the people around Steve. 
> 
> I'll be adding tags as they become relevant, let me know if there's anything I should tag for that I missed!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment Steve really fell in love with Peggy Carter

_Like the lights of home before me_  
**_Or an angel,_ ** _watching o'er me_  
_This will be my shining hour_ _  
_ 'til I'm with you again

_-[My Shining Hour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp0ZPS276SQ) by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, 1943. _

 

“Who taught you to throw a punch?”

Steve looks up, dread in his stomach and a bloody rag in his hand. Hodge caught him in the changing rooms, away from the eyes of the drill sergeant. It coulda been worse, but his nose has only just stopped bleeding. He can’t think of anyone he would like to see _less_ than Agent Carter, but it’s not like Steve has a history of getting what he wants.

She’s standing there, cool as a cucumber, and looking not remotely abashed to be in the doorway of the men’s changing rooms. But then -- It’s not like Steve’s seen a _women’s_ changing room on base. He’s not sure there is one here.

“A friend back home,” Steve says, looking down at the bloody rag, the places on his undershirt where there are brownish spots on the white cotton. He feels an irrational, useless urge to grab his button down and hide himself, his scrawny arms and skinny chest and--

“He was a boxer, I’m guessing?” Carter says. “Big fellow? Strong?”

Steve looks up. “Yeah, he was.” He winces. _“Is.”_ Jesus Christ, that slip is going to haunt him if-- “He’s at the front now.”

“Yes,” Carter says shortly. She’s an odd one. Maybe all British dames are like this: cool and collected and sharp as icicles, but Steve suspects not. She’s got her dark lips slightly pursed, thoughtful. “Come with me,” she says.

He wipes the rag across his face one more time and grabs his shirt. He’ll just button it up over--

“Don’t bother with that,” she orders, without looking back.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he says meekly, and follows. He’s not sure what to expect; a reprimand or an interrogation or--

She she just leads him out of the changing room and into the training room, with its mats and heavy bags and practice targets. It’s empty, and echoing, and dark. She flicks on the lights and they buzz to life. It’s just the two of them.

She steadies herself against the wall, and slips off her shoes. The heels land with two soft _clicks_ against the concrete floor. She steps, barefoot and an inch or two shorter now, onto the mat by the punching bags. She turns to face him. “Come along, Rogers.”

“Ma’am?” Steve says, a little unsure.

“Listen, we’ve got perhaps an hour before the other recruits start coming back from their night on the town, and I need to deliver a report to Phillips by then. I can give you forty five minutes, and my word that no one will know we did this.”

Steve’s eyes go wide, and he feels his ears start to go pink. Does she-- she can’t possibly mean--

But before he can make any kind of protest, she steps back into what is, unmistakably, a fighting stance. “Now. Do you want me to teach you how to knock out someone twice your size, or not?”

Steve stares at her, but only for a split second before he drops down to fight with the laces on his boots, to get them off and meet her on the mat.

“Marvelous,” she says, approvingly.

 

* * *

 

“It’s all physics,” she tells him, and shows him the throw again, but slower. He mimes the punch towards her face; she grabs his fist and moves out of its way, pulling it forward and twisting until he’s pulled over her shoulder and lands with a _thump_ on the mat.

She stands over him and cocks her head. “Force is just mass times acceleration. If you haven’t got mass, then you have to make up the difference with acceleration, see?” He stares up at her, watching her dark lips moving as she talks. “Use their speed against them when you can,” she carries on. She offers her hand and he takes it, letting her help him up. He’s not about to say that getting thrown over her shoulder for the fifth time is starting to make his back hurt like hell, but...

“If you can’t be stronger, be faster. Be smarter,” Steve says, remembering what Bucky had told him. _Mass times acceleration._ Buck would like this dame.

Selfishly, Steve decides right then he _won’t_ mention her in his next letter.

“Just so,” Carter agrees, her dark lips curling up at the corners. “Alright, it’s your turn. And know that If you try to go easy on me I shall hit you for real.”

 

* * *

 

“Fists are actually quite breakable,” she comments, while she’s showing him how to throw an elbow into the punching bag. “Lots of little bones to fracture, there.”

“Believe me, I know,” Steve mutters, copying the move as best he can on the other bag.

“So instead of hitting someone with a bag full of twigs, hit them with something sturdier.” She claps her hand against her elbow, the muscles on her upper arms visible through her blouse, and then pats her bicep, drawing a line there, where the bone lies underneath. “This one here, or, even better--” and, mortifyingly, she pats her thigh.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Uh. How--”

In the same businesslike, no-nonsense way, she takes a step back from the bag and hikes up her skirt. Steve catches a glimpse of a strap against the creamy skin of her thigh and looks away.

“Come on, Rogers,” she orders, sharply. “No time to be squeamish.”

“I’m -- I’m not squeamish, I just don’t want to--”

“Waste my time?” Carter challenges. “Brace that bag for me and _pay attention_.”

Dutifully, he moves to stand behind the bag, to hold it steady. He looks up, his face hot. She’s still got her skirt hitched up. He can see the shiny silk slip underneath and... The strap around her thigh is a holster, with a tiny little pistol in it.

_Fuck,_ Steve thinks, fervently. He’s definitely not going to tell Bucky about this.

Agent Carter takes another step back, then throws herself forward, leaning into it and slamming her knee into the bag hard enough to send Steve back on his ass.

She catches the bag when it swings back at her, peers around it, and smirks at him. One perfect, dark, eyebrow arches. “See?”

He stares up at her, and knows that he probably looks starstruck. He doesn’t care. “Show me again?” He swallows. “Please.”

 

* * *

 

“It’s not like you’re going to become an expert in hand to hand combat from one forty-five minute lesson, but…” she steps back from the mat. “Not bad, anyway.”

“Thank you, Agent Carter,” he says, extending a hand.

She shakes. “Don’t mention it, Rogers,” she says, with emphasis.

There’s something under the statement, and it occurs to Steve…

This is a test. Another test. It’s always tests. He’s had Carter alone in a room for forty-five minutes, he could say anything about what they did here, make all kinds of claims, and even though he’s just a skinny little nobody, a private, he knows whose word they’d believe. And even if they didn’t believe it, they’d still use the rumor against her, because of who she is, and where she stands.

“I won’t,” he says. “You have my word.”

She gives a crisp little nod. It feels like they’ve just signed a pact of some kind, shared an understanding. She steps back into her shoes and walks away without another word, heels clicking.

Steve thinks that he may be in trouble, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Bucky Barnes: Dreamland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> many moons ago, strangedazey said: "I wonder what Bucky was dreaming that woke him up when Steve did?" after reading Chapter Two of [Good Morning Heartache, What's New?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332756/chapters/30519654#workskin)
> 
>  
> 
> _little did she know what she had wrought._

_Bye bye baby_  
_Time to hit the road to **dreamland**_  
_You're mine baby_  
_Dig you in the land of nod_

_-[Hit the Road to Dreamland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxJKLOLSViU) By Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, 1943 _

 

Their shoebox is shaking. Must be the el going by, Bucky thinks. But that ain’t right -- the el’s on the other side of the Heights, so what’s…

Bucky sits up. His bed is hard. His bed is more like a table, with straps hanging off the sides, broken. Bucky stares at them, then remembers: Steve broke ‘em, let Bucky up off the table, but then there’d been nowhere else for Bucky to sleep. So Bucky sleeps here now. On the table with the broken straps. That’s fine.

Bucky is standing in the door of the kitchen. Steve is at the sink. Scrubbing paint off his brushes with his thin shoulders all hunched in.

“Steve?” Bucky says, but Steve can’t hear him over the sound of the el going by. Bucky can’t hear himself either, which is odd.

“When did they put in the new track?” is all Bucky can think to ask, even though neither of them can hear anything over the increasing pitch of it. The rattle is growing into a roar. It must go damn near over their heads now. It’s getting louder and louder and then -- outside the window, Bucky can see the huge tank rolling down their street -- the sound ain’t the el, it’s mortar fire, that high whine of a shell coming in hard and fast.

“Steve! Get away from there!” Steve can’t hear him, even though he’s shouting. Bucky can’t hear himself -- but he remembers, the Krauts muzzled him, after they strapped him down, and Steve broke the straps but he forgot the muzzle, so of course he can’t hear Bucky.

Bucky grabs Steve’s shoulder and pulls him away from the window.

Steve turns his head and his face is gone: just shiny red, like muscle, like melted wax, his twice-broken nose now just a black void, his teeth bared, jutting on the bottom, but those are his eyes staring out, blue and startled and welling over with tears and--

Bucky wakes up.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Jim Morita: Break the Kindest Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it’s still 1944 in Jim Morita’s head.
> 
> For mizz_prongs who wanted to see the scene in GMHWN between Chapters 4 and 5 where Steve gets shot from someone else’s POV. I don’t always take requests, but when I do shit like this happens.

You always **break the kindest heart**  
With a hasty word you can't recall

\- [You Always Hurt The One You Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuDm_dZX_y8) by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher, 1944

 

“STEVE!” Barnes bellows before going over the top.

“Sarge!” Dum Dum shouts, and gets himself up like he’s going to follow.

“Dugan!” Jim yells. He grabs the back of Dum Dum’s collar and yanks sharply, sending him on his ass in their makeshift foxhole. “Cover fire, you moron!” He says, punctuating the statement with a _chck-chck_ as he cocks his rifle. Dugan scrambles back to his knees and they both pop up over the edge to aim. “Cover fire!” Jim shouts, hoping that Gabe and Monty and Dernier can hear from wherever the fuck they are. “Sarge needs cover!”

Out in the field, Sarge is weaving between the trees towards where their dumbfuck captain just went down facefirst in the snow. He skids to a halt, ducking, and fumbles the shield up off the ground. A bullet pings off it and it slips from his hands, skittering away like a living thing. The reverb on that damn shield is hell, no matter what Stark says about it being vibration resistant.

Jim picks off a Squid Nazi taking aim and sees the fucker go back in a spray of red. Sarge, meanwhile, has jammed the shield in the dirt by the Captain’s head for cover. He’s leaning over Rogers, shouting something incomprehensible.

“Get him back here!” Jim shouts, even though he knows it is supremely un-fucking-helpful. But Jim can’t go out there. He may not be much of a medic, but he’s the only medic they got, so he’s strictly forbidden from running his ass out into no-man’s-land. “Get him outta there!”

Barnes casts a look back at Jim; the distance between them might as well be miles. Cap’s heavy as a goddamn horse.

 _“Sergent!”_ Dernier shouts in his thick, throaty accent, followed by the only phrase in English he knows at this point: “FIRE IN ZE HOLE!”

Jim sees Barnes throw himself across the Captain’s form, covering him as best he can when Cap’s the size of a damn whale. Jim throws himself down and holds his helmet tight down over his ears.

The _BOOM_ that follows is a true Dernier Special, big enough to leave Jim’s ears ringing and his head buzzing. When he no longer feels dirt raining down on his back, he stumbles up. Maybe they can get out there and help Barnes--

But the Sergeant is already falling into their foxhole, with the Captain across his back in a fireman’s carry. Some-fucking-how. Adrenaline or whatever. Like that time Jim’s Uncle Daisuke picked up the back end of the truck to free Cousin Eric. Eric had been okay in the end: just a broken leg, he healed up fine.

The Captain doesn’t look fine. He’s white as a sheet under the helmet; his eyes are open, but only barely.

And he’s fucking drenched in blood from the waist down.

“Oh Jesus.” For a moment Jim is frozen, not because he’s never seen blood, or even because he’s never seen _this much_ blood. But he’s been doing this long enough that he knows what _too much blood_ looks like, and it looks like _this._

Barnes yanks the helmet off Cap’s head, which lolls like it’s on a greased ball joint. Then he hauls off and slaps Cap across the face, hard enough to leave a mark. Jim wants to tell him to stop, tell him it’s too late, but--

 _“WAKE THE FUCK UP YOU BASTARD,”_ Barnes bellows. Barnes is normally a pretty soft spoken guy, actually, but that just means that when he _does_ shout, it _means_ something.

And lo and behold, Cap opens his eyes wide, brow furrowing like he’s confused, and says “ow” in the softest, smallest voice Jim’s ever heard from the guy.

“Holy Shit.” Jim scrambles to get the field tourniquet, the dressing, the sulfa powder, even though Cap isn’t supposed to need that shit.

“You bastard! You goddamn _moron!”_ Barnes is hollering while Jim scrambles to get the wound packed, to try and stop the bleeding. “You--” and then he starts talking Yiddish, like English is insufficient to contain his full wrath.

“He gonna make it?” Dum Dum says, like the idiot he fucking is.

Barnes turns on him, teeth bared, and grabs Dum Dum by the front of his shirt. For a second, Jim thinks that Dum Dum is about to get slapped too. “Get. The squad.” And then he drops Dum Dum and the guy scrambles away to muster the retreat. Bullets fly after him, and they can hear German shouting in the distance, through the ringing in their ears.

For the first time, Jim registers that Barnes has the shield on his back and wonders when the hell he had time to get the harness off Cap and onto himself.

Barnes turns to Jim. “What d’you need?”

Jim’s hands slip in the blood, trying to get the bandage secure, as tight as he can, tighter. Cap groans weakly, a thin, high sound. “I need to stitch him up, can’t do that here,” Jim says, through gritted teeth.

“So get a bandage on him and we’ll move.”

“We very much should _not_ do that,” Jim points out. “He can’t walk on this leg.”

“Just slap a bandage on,” Barnes says again, and there’s something intense in his eyes. Like maybe the force of his will can somehow magically  _make_ the Captain walk. “We’ll worry about the rest later.”

Jim is _already_ slapping a bandage on, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to change facts. “He’s not gonna make--”

“That’s an order, _Private_ ,” Barnes snaps.

Jim grits his teeth. “Bandage and tourniquet, then we can move him. Two minutes.”

“You got _one.”_

“Buh?” Cap says, very faint. He looks checked the fuck out, his skin clammy and sheet white, but even that much consciousness is a miracle. It’s _impossible._

Barnes’s tone turns on a dime, from tense rage to something you might adopt while talking to your sick child. All soft and shit. “Yeah pal, I’m here. You staying with me?”

“Mh,” Cap says, in an agreeing sort of way.

Jim doesn’t know how the guy is still _breathing_ much less saying anything, but who knows what the fuck they pumped into his veins. Hell. He checks that the bandage is as secure as it can be, under the circumstances. He looks up at Barnes and nods, and gets a nod in return.

“Okay pal,” Barnes says. “Time to go.”

Cap grumbles like a kid who doesn’t want to wake up. Barnes is lifting his head, slipping the helmet back on, buckling it back under Rogers’ chin. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Can you carry him?” Jim asks.

“He can carry himself,” Bucky says.

He really _shouldn’t_ but it’s not like they have much choice.

“Come on pal, up and at ‘em, right?” Barnes tugs on the Captain’s arm, pulling him up.

Cap’s head lolls, but his eyes pop open, almost comical, and he shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “So drunk,” he says, nonsensically.

Jim looks at Barnes, who’s insinuated himself under Rogers’ arm. Barnes looks back, eyes wide like a scared kid. He swallows.

“Yeah you are,” Barnes says. “So, so drunk. Gotta get you home.”

Cap mumbles something else, even less coherent. His lips are going blue. His helmet bonks against the Sergeant’s as Barnes somehow -- _somehow_ gets the bastard up on his feet. “Yeah, buddy,” Barnes is saying, a thick thread of strain running through his voice. “You fell asleep in the park. Pretty dumb, huh?”

The rest of the squad forms up around them; Jim sticking close to Cap’s side, just in case. Gabe’s on the other side with his Tommy gun at the ready and the fancy Hydra decryptor strapped to his pack. Dugan and Falsworth cover their retreat and Dernier takes point. But only a few stray shots follow them -- either that last explosion threw the Krauts into retreat or they got what they were after.

Cap makes a pained sound and Jim thinks, privately, that yeah, the Krauts got exactly what they were after. Barnes _said_ this was a trap. Jim watches the way Cap’s dragging that leg with anxiety. He shouldn’t be walking on it. Hell, he shouldn’t be _able_ to walk on it. He shouldn’t be _alive._

But well… It’s more than a mile back to camp, so there’s plenty of time for that fortune to reverse. No matter how you slice it (ha ha ha) this ends with an amputation, because that tourniquet might be keeping Cap from dying but it’s killing his leg.

Barnes keeps up a low murmur of chatter in a steady, soothing voice Jim’s never heard before. “One foot in front of the other, right? Lean on me as much as you need.”

“Cold, Buck,” Cap complains, sounding all of twelve years old.

“Yeah it is. That’s why we gotta get back to the apartment, right? Get you in where it’s warm, don’t want you catching something.” Barnes’s voice has gone all the way back to Brooklyn in a real hurry, he’s speaking low, saying something soft that Jim can’t quite catch, but starts with “hey Stevie, remember that time...” and trails off into a long, rambling monologue, the rhythm of the story matching their shuffling, too-slow steps. Cap’s head is tipped towards the Sergeant like a flower towards the sun, focusing as hard as he can on whatever Barnes is saying. When Barnes’s story ends on an up-lilt, the captain _laughs_ \-- a little explosion of a giggle.

“Hey,” Barnes says, quiet. “None ‘a that, gotta be quiet. Folks’re tryna sleep.”

Jim exchanges a look with Gabe, who’s got a tight, unhappy downturn to his mouth. Barnes catches the look too, and his voice might be steady, but his eyes are wild, whites showing all the way around.

 

By the time they’re getting Rogers laid out on the cot in his tent (since it’s not like they’ve got a damn medical facility to do this in) his fingernails are the same color as his lips, blue like frostbite. “Gabe, get my full kit. Everybody else out. Not, you, Sarge, I’ll need you to hold him down.” Then he starts cutting the material of the captain’s trousers.

The captain doesn’t even stir, and that’s… that’s worrying.

“Steve?” Bucky is saying. “Stevie?”

“Tired,” Cap says, in a very small voice.

“Don’t let him sleep,” Jim says, as he peels away the bandages and starts going to work. He knows that he doesn’t have to worry about infection with Cap, he’d been told that much, but it’s one thing to _know_ that, and something else to be doing surgery in a dirty tent with no antiseptic. He needs to get the bullet out, needs to--

Gabe comes back in with the full kit. He knows what Morita needs, and a moment later Gabe’s handing over the forceps while he gets the needle and floss ready.

Jim, meanwhile, has gotten the bandage out of the way. “Holy shit,” he says, peering at the wound, and not quite believing what he’s seeing. Far from the damaged and dying tissue he expects, there’s a fresh scar starting to form. If he stared long enough, he’s pretty sure he could watch it grow, but--

But that means that maybe, insanely, there’s a chance he can save the leg and therefore _not_ be the guy who turned Captain America into an amputee.

“I gotta get the bullet out,” Jim says. “This is gonna hurt.” The flesh has already started closing _around the damn bullet_ which means he’s gonna start bleeding again when Jim pulls it out and -- this is all a mess, Jim is _not qualified to deal with this shit._ He grits his teeth, gets a grip with the forceps, and _pulls._

There’s no reaction, just a moment of awful, _awful,_ silence.

“No, no, no--” Barnes says.

Jim tries to tune it out, tries to focus on the wound in front of him, getting it closed up even as it starts bleeding again, sluggishly. Too sluggishly. He looks up and sees that Gabe has his fingers around the captain’s wrist. Gabe’s wide eyes tell Jim all he needs to know.

Barnes tears the helmet off again. “Steve! Steve! Come on, pal, stay with me.” The Captain doesn’t respond. Barnes slaps him, hard, like he did before. “You don’t get to die on me, asshole!” Barnes shouts. “Not on my fucking watch, do you hear me?”

Gabe drops wrist in his fingers like it just scorched him. He stares at the Captain’s chest, which rises as he sucks in a stuttering gasp.

When Jim looks down, the vein he was trying to suture is already closing.

The Captain screams.

 

* * *

 

“Jim. Jim! _Jim!”_

Jim opens his eyes with a start, flails gracelessly, and then freezes when a pair of small hands capture his and hold tight.

He blinks away the tent, the stench of blood, the captain’s scream.

Lisa’s face hovers before him, her hair hanging down like a black curtain, shot through with silver strands.

“It’s okay,” she says, squeezing his fingers. “You’re okay.”

His hands are freezing, slick with cold sweat. He swallows and nods.

“Was it the camp again?” she asks, rubbing her thumbs in soothing little circles.

He winces and shakes his head, tugs his hands out of her grip to wipe them over his face. “The first mission,” he says. He pushes himself upright, not quite meeting her warm, brown gaze.

“The one where Cap took a bullet?” Lisa knows all his nightmares. They’ve been married for five years now, so of course she does.

He nods.

“You’ve had that one a lot lately. Wouldn’t have anything to do with it being springtime, I suppose?” She flops down on her side, folds her hands sideways under her cheek and blinks innocently up at him.

Jim sighs and rolls his eyes. Of _course_ it has to do with it being springtime, because if it’s springtime, the ice is breaking up, and… “Howard called. Wants me to go fishing with him.”

“Yeah I figured,” Lisa says. “You going to go?” She blinks at him. “If Stark is going to be there, at least the booze will be good. That’s what fishing is all about, right? Drinking with your buddies?”

Jim shudders.

Lisa winces sympathetically. She knows, of course; fishing with Howard isn’t fishing. You’re on a boat, sure, but there’s never any goddamn _fish._ They just call it fishing because they’ve all got twisted fucking senses of humor.

“We never find anything,” Jim says, rubbing his eyes again. “And I mean. We can’t let him go alone, God knows what he’d do. And I guess it’s _my turn_ or whatever. Dugan went the last two years, said he can’t take it anymore, you know? It’s my turn, and we can’t let him go alone, but _God,_ we never _find anything._ I keep thinking -- if we could just _find something_ maybe I’d--” He bites back the end of the sentence.

“Maybe you’d what?” Lisa prompts.

Jim thinks of that tent, the stench of blood and the flesh knitting up so impossibly fast. Cap was on his feet the next day. It was a miracle, but the thing no one really remembers about miracles is that the work of God isn’t just beautiful, it’s also _terrible._ And Cap had certainly been that; wonderful and terrifying like an angel with a fiery sword. And after that first mission especially, Jim couldn’t help staring. He kept catching the others staring too, their expressions a mix of marvel and fear.

And then there had been Barnes, staring at the Captain like he was the last letter from home; longing and sadness and bittersweet joy all tumbling over each other on his face. Then the Captain would catch his eye and they’d both grin like they just caught sight of Lady Liberty on the boat home.

But that was no different. Barnes and Rogers always looked at each other like that.

“Jim?” Lisa says. She’s sitting up now, her small hand rubbing a circle on Jim’s back.

Jim closes his eyes and lets the touch rock him a little. It’s 1957 and the war is long done. But a part of him keeps getting stuck in that tent in 1944, watching the awful miracle under his hands. The nightmare of flesh healing too fast.

In a rush, it comes out of him. “If we could _find something_ maybe I could believe that they’re dead. _”_

Lisa’s hand stops moving.

Jim squeezes his eyes tight shut, cursing himself. Lisa knows everything else, but even she doesn’t know this.

“They?” she says, carefully.

“It’s nothing,” he’s quick to say. “It’s just… just crazy thinking.”

Maybe it _is_ crazy thinking, but he’s pretty sure it’s the same thinking driving them all crazy. No one ever talks about. He’s certainly never told anyone, because he wasn’t _sure_ then. Every year after that, dwelling on the memories, the suspicion built in him. He _knows_ now, he’s _sure,_ but it’s too fucking _late._ Who would’ve listened to him then, anyway? Who would listen to him now? He was just a private, just the medic, just a Jap. But goddammit, he stitched them both up more than once, he knows what he saw.

Whatever Rogers had, Barnes was just the same.

And no one found the fucking _bodies._

“Jim…” Lisa starts.

He shakes his head. “Don’t ask me. Please don’t--”

Lisa’s arms come around him, holding fast.

Jim buries his face in her shoulder. She smells a little like powder and the baby, and a little like the perfume he got for her last Christmas, but mostly like herself; just skin and sweat and the sheets they sleep in.

He doesn’t pray much anymore, but he prays for this: he prays that wherever Barnes and Rogers are now, that they’re together. Somehow.

 

 

 

 

 


	4. The Howling Commandos: Faithful Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> be the wholesome howling commando holiday content you want to see in the world.

_Once again as in olden days_ _  
_ _Happy golden days of yore_ _  
_ _**Faithful friends** who are dear to us _   
Will be near to us once more

_\- “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”_

 

They celebrate the holidays early that year, because they are all in London for fucking once, but it won't last. They know they’re going to be sent to the Eastern Front, but they don’t know when. So they all decide: fuck it. It's December. Close e-bloody-nough.

This means that they are all of them get to watch the Second Annual Steve Rogers Gift-Giving Panic Holiday Revue.

The problem with Steve is that he’s the kind of thoughtful, caring (and weirdly competitive) guy who really _wants_ to give good (nay, the _best!)_ presents. But at the same time, he grew up poor, and remembers what it feels like to be given a gift that you can never hope to pay back. He remembers the awkwardness, the sense of obligation that comes with it. He doesn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

It is hilarious to watch these two opposing interests collide headlong and send him tripping all over himself.

It starts with faux-casual “questions” about, say, “what do you miss most from home?” Or “You know, I don’t know what I’d do without the occasional (favored foodstuff, treat, or luxury). What about you?” After a few days it escalates to him fretting to mutual acquaintances about the cost of such and such a thing, and what, exactly, constitutes _too much._

But all of this is accomplished in an atmosphere of maximum secrecy, as if Hydra spies lurk everywhere, just waiting to Spoil the Surprise. This is turned up to the absolute maximum when it comes to Barnes’ gift, because _Bucky is a sneaky little fox and he’s got ears every-damn-where,_ according to Steve. This year, he’s got a plan, and he’s not going to risk Bucky finding out about it, so he’s extra tight-lipped about said plan.

Unbeknownst to Steve, the Howlies start a little betting pool.

Peggy runs it, of course.

“Alright now lads, Last minute bets.” They’ve just gotten word that they’re shipping out in two days, so tonight is the impromptu Howling Commandos Early Christmas Party. “They’re on their way. We’ve got good odds on Barnes getting an actual puppy, what do you say?” She whips out her little notebook and pencil, and curves her red lips in a wicked little smile.

“No dice,” Gabe says from the corner where he’s reading something incomprehensible and German — last minute intel that needs deciphering. “I saw him talking to that black market guy. It’s gonna be whiskey.”

“Barnes doesn’t drink anymore,” Jim says without even looking up from the plate he’s loading with food. “It’d be a waste of money, and see if you catch Ebenezer Rogers wasting a single penny of his paycheck on something Barnes won’t even like.”

“Ebenezer Rogers? Really? Man’s got more Christmas spirit that the rest of us put together,” Howard points out. His Christmas present to everyone is the magnificent spread of elicit booze and foodstuffs. It’s as festive as a windowless room in an underground bunker can be. There are canapés, and that’s not nothing. Howard himself is drinking scotch from a tin cup.

“You ever seen him haggle over fish? Man’s _ruthless,”_ Jim says.

“Put me down for a carton of fags on a kitten,” Monty says, out of the blue, and pulls the smokes out of his pocket, tossing them to Peggy.

“Well shit,” Dugan says, because he knows perfectly well that if Monty is putting smokes down, he has a good reason. Dum Dum already put two bars of real, honest to God chocolate on ‘new boots.’ It’s not a bad bet -- they are going to the Eastern Front, after all. And it is winter. And Barnes does get cold very easily. But Monty _Knows_ Things.

Dugan scowls.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Dugan,” Peggy says airily, dropping the smokes into her purse, along with the rest of the pot, before she takes down Monty’s bet.

Monty sniffs, which is just his version of scowling. “Shows what you know,” he says.

Jacques, who was keeping watch in the hall outside, comes running. _“Attention! Ils arrivent!”_

There’s a flutter of running about as they all hurry to turn in last minute bets. And then they hear them coming.

“I am _not,”_ Rogers says.

“Three little syllables. _Ho Ho Ho,_ go on, just the once. Do it for me, Stevie.”

“No.”

“Come on, you got the sack full of toys and everythin’.”

_“I do not.”_

“Alright so it’s a box. It’s practically a _sleigh,_ come on I’ll dig you up a red—”

“Absolutely not!” Rogers exclaims as he comes around the corner, carrying a big wooden crate in his arms.

Monty looks to Dugan and raises both brows. _Kitten,_ he mouths, knowingly.

But then Rogers thumps the box down on the table nearest them. He _is_ red, in the face at least, even if he’s wearing nothing more festive than his drab olive uniform. Still. Red cheeks, green uniform. Moderately festive. More festive than Barnes in his blue coat, at any rate. Rogers looks up, sees the spread and the small crowd, and smiles as some of the tension falls out of him.

“Merry Christmas, guys, Peggy,” he says.

“Merry Christmas!” They chorus back.

“Why Steve,” Peggy says, without moving from her perch on the table. She’s got her legs crossed and her bag full of goodies sitting primly next to her. “Did you get us presents? We had _no idea.”_

“Sure you didn’t,” Steve says, grinning even as he goes redder.

“Pegs, is the pool still open?” Bucky asks.

“The what?” Steve says.

“Yes,” Peggy says.

_“The what?”_ Steve repeats.

“I would like to place a bet,” Bucky says solemnly.

“Bullshit!” Dugan calls. “You _know!_ You _already know what he’s getting you!”_

“No he doesn’t!” Steve protests. “I bent over backwards to keep it from him, I caught him breaking into my room last night, trying to — are you telling me there’s a _betting pool_ on _what Bucky’s present is?”_

“Why do you think I was trying to figure out what you got me?” Bucky says. “I would like!” He repeats, a little louder, “to place a bet!”

Peggy’s notebook reappears. “Go on,” she says.

“I’m not getting _anything_ from Steve-a Claus for Christmas this year because I’ve been _extremely naughty,_ as you all know,” Bucky declares. “And I’ll bet my fucking rifle on it.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“One Johnson sniper rifle on _nothing,_ a bold bet, Sergeant Barnes.” Peggy snaps her notebook shut. “Alright, I declare the betting pool closed.”

No one dares contradict her.

Everyone turns to look at Steve. “You’re all terrible with no sense of the _spirit of Christmas,”_ He tells them.

“Cut the crap, Rogers,” Morita says around a mouthful of canapés. “What's in the crate?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he does pull the lid off the crate and start handing out presents.

The boots, it turns out, are for Morita -- apparently, his have been giving him blisters that no one else noticed. Dugan is disappointed at first, but it turns out that his present is the whiskey they thought was for Barnes, and that's worth the chocolate. Monty gets a new ascot to replace one that got used as an emergency bandage. Dernier gets another bottle of French wine and Howard, for some reason, gets cheese and bread, which makes him positively howl with laughter while Peggy rolls her eyes -- at least until Steve blushingly presents her with a small pistol he had Howard modify specifically for her. It holds an extra two rounds but still fits in her thigh holster. She kisses his cheek in thanks, which makes him blush all the harder.

“Gabe!” He says, digging in his crate again and coming out with a battered case. “I found this and I don't know if it's any good but--”

“Oh God,” Gabe says, leaping up from his seat and practically snatching the case out of Steve's hands with what can only be described as hunger.

“Holy shit!” Morita exclaims in surprise.

“Is this really--” and Gabe clicks open the case to reveal a dull gleam of brass: a trumpet. “Oh my God,” he says again, a little reverent.

“You mentioned you played, and I just happened to be passing a pawn shop one day when I saw that and--”

Literally no one is buying this story, not for a second. Steve probably hunted through half of London looking for that.

“Cap, thank you so much,” Gabe says, with his heart in his eyes as he gazes at the trumpet.

“You gonna play something for us?” Dugan asks.

“Wait!” Morita says. “I wanna see what he got Barnes.”

“He didn't get me shit for Christmas,” Barnes says, grinning.

Steve scowls and reaches into the crate one last time. “You're a jerk, Barnes,” he says, and pulls out a basket. “I shouldn't even give you this.” And then he fidgets with the edge of the basket, like he's really having to debate with himself about it, not because Barnes is a jerk, but maybe because he's not sure.

“I know we can't really do it up proper,” Steve says, tone suddenly changing. “None of us know how and we ain't got time to work it out but uh…” he holds out the basket, a little stiffly. “Figured you could use a taste of home anyway.”

Barnes takes the basket, and looks genuinely curious. He flips back the tea towel covering the contents and a soft smile breaks out all over his face.

Barnes smirks a lot, and grins, shark-like, all the time, but this is the kind of smile that only comes along rarely, when he’s looking at babies or (Monty still hopes) kittens.

Rogers takes a deep breath. “Happy Hanukkah, Bucky.”

“Oh shit, is it?” Dum Dum blurts out.

“First night,” Barnes confirms. He’s grinning, dimples out in force. He pulls out -- not a kitten, but what looks like the bastard offspring of a hash brown and a pancake. He nibbles a corner and moans appreciation. “Oh my god they’re still warm.”

“Happy Hanukkah, Barnes!” The others chorus out.

But the next thing they know Barnes has turned to Peggy. “Pay up!” He demands. “Seein’ as how this here is a Hanukkah present, not a Christmas anything.”

Peggy is, as always, graceful in defeat, and hands over the bag with all their bets inside. The others are groaning, until Barnes unceremoniously pops open the bag and says: “Merry Christmas, you goddamn maniacs,” and starts handing back their bets like they’re presents.

“The kitten was for Phillips,” Barnes confides when he slips the smokes back into Monty’s breast pocket.

When he gets to Howard, he finds the genius giving him an odd look. Bucky hands over the gold watch Howard had bet (on boots. It really had been a decent guess.) “There ya go.”

Howard’s mouth twists in a weird half smile. He lifts the watch (there’s already a new one on his wrist) in a mini salute and says: “Shalom, Barnes.”

Bucky is taken aback. “Oh yeah?”

Howard looks down at the watch in his hands. “Been years, but... yeah.”

Barnes graciously hands him a latke. “‘Fraid Steve didn’t know to get sour cream.”

“You can’t get it around here anyway. And I’m more of an applesauce man myself.”

Barnes makes an exaggerated gasp of horror. “Heathen!”

“That’s what they call me,” Howard says with a wry little smile.

And then a trumpet note sounds out, ringing and pure and surprisingly soft in the small basement room. Everyone stops talking and turns to see Gabe Jones perched on a stool in the corner. The trumpet in his hands is battered and dull. There’s a dent in the bell, and the water key is held shut with some excessively knotted string, but the sound is pure and clear.

The whole group listens, enraptured, as the song winds on; a sweet, slow, and heavily improvised jazz rendition of that Judy Garland song that everyone’s been dizzy over.

Steve looks across at Bucky and finds his friend staring, enraptured, eyes half closed, the basket of latkes clutched to his chest.

_Next year all our troubles will be miles away,_ Steve hears in his head, and prays for that to be true.

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Gabe Jones: Each Mountain Disappears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read this immediately after reading the last chapter of GMHWN if you want to cry even harder.

_Till the wells run dry and **each mountain disappears**_   
_I’ll be there to care for you through laughter and through tears._

_-[Till the End of Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSJ-oT2ZBa0) by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman, 1945_

 

There comes a point, with the kids, and then later with the grandkids, when they start asking for a different kind of Howling Commando story. The tales of fun and shenanigans don’t satisfy them anymore. They already know know about how wily Cap was and how ridiculous Dugan was. They want to know _more._ They want to know something  _real._

_What was it_ really _like?_ They ask, as if the fun and shenanigans are less real because the ending was sad.

And Gabe always tries to explain that yes, it really was like that. They really were a bunch of twenty-something idiots who were in way over their heads. Most of the kids don’t understand, because none of them got dunked in a warzone when they were twenty.

And then, in June 2002, Antoine comes knocking on his grandfather’s door and explains that he had a conversation with a recruiter, and after what happened last year, he thinks he knows what the right thing to do is. The kid’s only nineteen, and so obviously scared underneath his determination.

So Gabe invites him in, and makes him some tea, and tells him a different kind of story. “The first time we lost a man,” he begins...

 

* * *

 

For about twenty minutes, Gabe thinks he’s the only one who made it.

Because if Cap and Sarge haven’t come up here to help him secure Zola, then Cap and Sarge are dead. Which means he’s got to get this fucker tied up, stop the train, and contact Phillips for extraction all by himself. And he doesn’t know for sure that there aren’t any more Hydra guards in the carriages.

Luckily, Zola and the driver are both quivering cowards, so that first bit isn’t hard. And he speaks and reads German well enough to find the emergency stop. The train screeches to a halt shortly after that, and Gabe radios for Phillips to come get them. They’re at the end of the pass now, and Phillips radios back that it’ll be another hour at least before the trucks to reach the rendezvous.

Gabe checks that the driver is secure, that Zola is tied up, then clocks him hard with the butt of his rifle. The guy’s out like a light.

The train is suddenly, terribly silent, except for the hiss of the engines cooling down. Gabe listens -- he’s always had good ears. He can’t hear anything.

But he can’t just assume that Cap and Sarge -- _Steve_ and _Bucky,_ his _friends_ \-- are gone, just because he can’t hear them. Maybe they’re hurt. Maybe they need help.

But he doesn’t really believe that. Like he told Morita before they even went up the damn mountain. _I got a bad feeling about this one._

So he’s pretty sure that Cap and Sarge are dead. Still. He goes to secure the rest of the train, to see what he can find.

 

He finds the shield, discarded, a few cars back, just past the body of one of those hugely armored Hydra goons. The side of the car has been peeled away, like the lid on a can of spam. Snow is swirling inside, starting to gather against the crates and boxes. Fear clenches Gabe’s guts, twists hard.

He picks up the shield. It’s heavy as hell, just like he remembers. Once, at an ambush that went sour, an errant explosion had sent the shield flying. The damn thing had nearly taken Gabe’s head off, ended up buried halfway in a tree. Gabe had managed to get it out somehow, and carried it back to camp.

Cap’s hands had been full at the time, carrying Barnes.

So Gabe already knows that the shield’s got its own distinct feel. Whenever it bumps against something, it hums for ages, and almost seems to want to twist out of your hands, like it’s trying to go twelve directions at once. Cap makes it look easy, carrying the thing the way he does, bouncing it and catching it like magic, but it isn’t easy. Cap’s just that good.

Gabe keeps looking.

He finds Cap’s helmet, not far away, half rolled under a stack of boxes. He’s always taking the thing off without thinking about it, and Sarge is always shoving it back onto his head.

Then he finds Bucky’s rifle. And then Bucky’s service revolver. There are bullet casings everywhere, singing when his boots send them rolling.

He finds Cap’s gloves, discarded, one right after the other, and then Cap’s pistol, the little _SGR_ on the butt.

He almost misses Cap completely.

Rogers has tucked himself between two stacks of boxed cargo -- Hydra weapons -- his back to the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, his hands clenched in white-knuckled fists.

“Cap--” Gabe starts, relieved, but then pulls up short.

The Captain doesn’t even look up. His face is ghastly pale in the shadows between the boxes. He’s staring ahead, but his expression is slack, like he’s seeing something far, far away. Gabe’s seen this before. Hell, he’s seen it on _Cap_ before -- after D-Day, in the trenches, once or twice in France.

What he’s never seen before is Rogers, looking like _that,_ without _Barnes._ Barnes was _always_ there, one arm around those Charles Atlas shoulders, telling some dumb joke or humming whatever fucking song was stuck in his head, or even just sitting there, drawn and exhausted himself.

Once, in the trenches, after a particularly gory episode, Sarge had seen Gabe looking, shrugged one shoulder, and said: “he thinks too much sometimes, that’s all.” Like that was an explanation. Like it was no big deal, when they all knew that it was a big deal, because they’d all felt the same way  at one time or another.

“Cap?” Gabe says, full of dread. “Where’s--”

Cap flinches, hard, pulling further into himself, like he’s trying to turn back into the skinny little punk that Sarge tells stories about. For the first time, Gabe can really see it, like there’s a little guy there, lost inside the cavernous empty house of Cap’s big body.

And that’s when Gabe knows.

He just _knows._

He swallows, puts down the shield, and crouches down in front of Cap. The guy’s still gone inside himself, still somewhere else in his head. “Steve?” he says.

Steve blinks, and looks up, and he’s…

Suddenly he’s there again, behind his eyes, but it’s _terrible._ There’s just pain and bafflement, like a kicked dog, like a lost little child. Gabe covers Steve’s hands, where they’re still gripped tight around his knees. His knuckles are like ice. “C’mon, Captain,” he says, dredging up the voice he used before the war, to talk to his little brothers and sisters, when they’d just gotten away from the bullies.

Funny. The bullies always used to look like Steve, but now…

“You gotta tell me what happened, sir,” Gabe says.

“Happened…” Steve repeats. His lips look blue, the word unsteady. But there’s nothing more.

“Where’s--” He doesn’t want to ask. He has to ask. “Cap. Where’s Sarge?”

A sound escapes, small, and winded. A sound that doesn’t belong in the same postcode as that big body, that red, white, and blue uniform. The sound resolves into words, slowly, the kind of slur that usually means _wounded,_ not _drunk._ “H-he fell.” The Captain swallows, and for a moment his eyes go away again, but now he looks _terrified._ “The ravine.”

Gabe thinks about the torn open side of the train, Thinks of the jagged rocks of the ravine flying by under his feet as they zipped along the line. No one could survive that. No one would want to.

Gabe squeezes Steve’s cold hands. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

Steve stares at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

Gabe swallows.  He needs to get Steve outta here, needs to check him over for injuries, because the way he’s out of it -- it’s _worrying._ “It’s freezing in here. Sarge wouldn’t want you to be cold. Let’s go.”

 

They check the rest of the train, and Steve slowly pulls himself together. His movements are robotic, and his eyes are far away, but Gabe sees him do it: pushing it down and back, bottling it up.

They aren’t done yet, so he can’t stop yet.

By the time Phillips arrives with the truck, Steve is gone again, but this time he isn’t _absent._ His jaw is set, he gives orders, he walks and talks and carries the shield. Once, horrifyingly, Gabe sees him laugh. Someone makes a dry crack about how Zola will have a _great_ time in the truck, with all his old friends from the 107th, and Steve _laughs._

It is maybe the worst laugh Gabe has ever heard from someone who isn’t a Nazi. It’s harsh and savage and mechanical all at once. Like a wind up toy laughing. Like a _cursed_ wind up toy laughing.

 

Back in London, in the bunkers, someone had clearly radioed ahead to let the Howlies know what happened to their sergeant. As soon as Gabe sees Dugan’s red eyes, he knows that they know. Morita pulls Gabe into a rough hug, and Dugan’s big paw settles on his back, and when he pulls away, Dernier is offering a flask and--

“Where’s the Captain?” Falsworth asks, neatly stealing the flask and taking a swig himself before handing it back to Gabe.

Gabe glances behind him. Cap had been right there a second ago, but…

“I don’t know,” Gabe says. He turns, thinking that he should go and find -- that Cap shouldn’t be alone right now. But then there’s a hand on his elbow and he turns to find Dernier’s face. He’s the oldest of them, and he’s lost the most, more even than Monty. It hardly ever shows, but now…

“On ne guérit d'une souffrance qu'à condition de l'éprouver pleinement,” Dernier quotes.

“What’s that?” says Dugan, almost reflexively. He always says _What’s that?_ too loud and obnoxious, but now he sounds like he’s got a head cold.

“He says leave him be,” Gabe says, because he doesn’t think that he can say _we are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full_ without bursting into tears himself.

 

* * *

 

“...Cap never really came back from the train,” Gabe explains. He’s in his sunny kitchen in the future, and his tea is still warm, and his grandson is listening. Learning. “He kept walking and talking. He put on a good show, but he never really came back.” Gabe looks down at his hands -- old man hands, dark against the pale countertop and the chipped white ceramic. “For a long time, I thought maybe it’s just like that. Maybe there are some things you never really come back from. And that scared me. Not just in war, but in life -- life after the war, I mean. The idea that grief was going to come along and just take me out at the knees like that. If it could take Cap down, what chance did I stand?”

Gabe twists the scuffed gold band on his left ring finger and thinks of the day he said goodbye to his wife. He looks up and finds Antoine looking at him, eyes wide. The kid’s scared. He wants to sign up, do the right thing, even if he’s not absolutely sure what that is.

Gabe smiles, rueful. “I was young. Then I got old,” he says. “I learned. You can recover from anything, trust me. You just need time and help. Doesn’t matter how strong you think you are, you need time and help.”

“And Cap didn’t get either,” Antoine says.

Gabe blinks hard. Every time he thinks he’s done crying about the past, he’s wrong. “Cap didn’t get either,” he confirms. He leans forward a little bit. “Kid, have you promised that recruiter anything yet?”

Antoine shakes his head. “No, sir.”

Gabe pats his hand. “You’re a smart kid, Antoine. Nothing wrong with joining the army, but if you ask me, terrorism is a symptom. That’s not where the real fight is. Let me talk to some people for you. If you want to help, I think I know a place where you could do some good…”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes Antoine is supposed to be Tripp, who in my mind at least is immortal and even the Snap couldn't kill him because he's Too Good. Anyway. It didn't make sense to me that Gabe would call his grandson by his last name, I figured that Tripp was a nickname he picked up in training.


	6. Rebecca Barnes: Far Beyond a Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for maximum cry, read between the end of GMHWN and the beginning of TTOK

It's **far beyond a star**  
It's near beyond the moon  
I know beyond a doubt  
My heart will lead me there soon  
\- [Beyond the Sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8OlDPqYBLw) by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman, 1945

 

Rebecca Barnes Proctor does not consider herself superstitious. She certainly would never say it aloud.

But.

Baby JB (who isn’t really a baby anymore) doesn’t cry much at all, but there was a stretch in 1945 when she cried all the time. Enough that they’d taken her to the doctor, who couldn’t find anything wrong.

Later, Becca can’t remember the exact date when it started, but she’s sure that it was after Valentine’s Day, but before the beginning of March. Perhaps the 19th? She’s almost certain it was the 19th.  She doesn’t like to even think about _why_ she thinks it was the 19th. It was a perfectly ordinary day. She’d been singing along with the radio while she chopped up a potato. She can’t remember what song it was, but she remembers this, so, so clearly:

The knife slips, and slides all the way across her palm. She stares at it, baffled and silent. Before it can start to hurt -- she’s certain of this, it happens _before_ the pain hits her nerves, before she can do anything other than stop singing and stare at the blood welling up on her palm.

“You alright, Becs?” Mr. Barnes says, peering into the kitchen. Grey hairs stand out in a halo around his head. His voice is soft, as always. “I thought I heard--”

And Baby JB lets out a thin banshee wail from where she’s sitting on the floor.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t believe it,” Susan says, two weeks later, when Becca wordlessly hands her the paper she’d picked up on the way home from work. “Not for a second. He’s stupid, but he ain’t that stupid.” She throws the paper down on the table between them. The three of them -- the three sisters. _Like the Morrigan,_ Becca thinks. _Like the Fates._

Steve’s face glares out at all of them from under the headline. _Rogers Disappears._ Those heavy brows, his crooked nose. It’s his face, but she’s still not used to seeing it like this: broad-jawed and set above those Charles Atlas shoulders.

“I don’t believe it either,” Jeanie agrees. She smiles. Everything’s a joke with Jeanie. “Not for a second. They’ll turn up, like they did before. Ma will really kick their asses this time.”

They both glance at Becca. They’re waiting for her to chime in. She’s the oldest. The sensible one. She’s _married,_ and has a _baby --_ a toddler now, turning more and more into a person every day. She feels so much older than she did five years ago, before she got married -- or three years ago, before Judith was born -- or two days ago, before the telegrams arrived.

She doesn’t say anything.

“It’s like the telegrams said,” Susan declares. “Missing in action.”

The telegrams had arrived late on the night of the 4th, condolences hand delivered by an officer in uniform. The officer had apologized that Bucky’s hadn’t been delivered earlier, but they were waiting for confirmation. Confirmation hadn’t come, not really, but… Ma accepted the telegrams with calm dignity. In private, later, she'd thrown the scraps down and said: “I'll believe it when I fucking see it,” before storming off.

The telegrams had sat there, untouched on the hall table, ever since. Becca doesn’t consider herself superstitious, but she doesn’t want to touch them. She just doesn't.

“Missing in action ain’t killed in action,” Jeanie agrees. “Doncha think, Becs?”

They’re right. Missing in action isn’t killed in action. It’s so much worse, Becca thinks. There’s no _answers._ None of it feels _real._

She stares at the picture that she only kind of recognizes and the smaller one, further down, that she recognizes like  it’s her own. Bucky in his uniform, hat cocked, almost smiling. She feels… queasy. Uneasy. It might be morning sickness, but--

Judith starts crying, then, so Becca doesn’t have to say anything.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, the streets are thick with people celebrating. It’s V-E day and it feels more unreal than ever. Judith cries all day, fussing. She doesn’t like the noise. Becca’s sure that’s what it is.

 

* * *

 

Less than a week later, Judith is fussing again. It’s been relentless since February, like she can’t get comfortable, like she can’t settle. Becca would say that she’s picking up on the tension in the house, but it started before that, so--

She stops so abruptly that Becca is momentarily afraid. But when she looks down into the crib, Judith is just staring back at her like nothing is wrong, despite her snotty nose and red eyes.

Becca is cleaning Judith’s face when the front door knocker sounds out, loud through the house. Becca jumps. It was like she could feel the knocker in her bones. She stares towards the front hall for a moment, frozen, before she can pull herself together and gosee who’s there.

It’s a woman in uniform. She’s standing between two trunks. _Foot lockers,_ Becca thinks. And then, senselessly: _did she drag them here by herself?_ She looks so perfectly put together, so immaculate. “Mrs. Barnes?” she says, in a crisp English accent

“Proctor,” Becca corrects. “Rebecca Barnes Proctor. Mrs Barnes is my mother.”

“I’m Agent Carter. You…” Agent Carter trails off. She is staring, as certain people sometimes do, at Becca’s eyes.

“You’re a friend of Bucky’s.” Becca knows. She has her brother’s eyes. She knows it.

Agent Carter gives one crisp nod. She takes off her hat, tucks it under her arm, and glances at the boxes at her feet. “These are… I wanted to make sure that they got where they belonged,” she says, firmly. “Personally. Least I could do, under the circumstances.” There’s something in the way she says it, something Becca recognizes.

She leans against the doorframe. “You’ve met Steve, I see.”

Carter’s head snaps up, surprised. Her cheeks are going pink, and Becca’s got the feeling that don’t happen too often.

Becca smiles. “I know the look. S’ok. He’s contagious. No one’s immune.”

“Immune to what?”

“Rogersitis,” Becca says drily, and she knows that she sounds like her brother when she says it, because Carter looks like Becca just slapped her across the face. She winces and looks away. “You know. His whole “ _I must do the right thing even if that’s only going to make it worse”_ thing?” Steve had always been like that, and Susan had caught it from him -- that fire. She wasn’t the only one either. Bucky certainly had it (no matter what he claimed), Jeanie, even their poor cousin Arnie had joined that socialist club and started going to protests after exactly one meeting with Steve. Rogersitis was very catching. “Buck… Buck calls it The Stupids.” _You got a fatal case, pal. The Stupids are gonna kill you one of these days._

“Oh,” Carter says, eyes suddenly bright. “God. The Stupids. Yes, it… he…” Becca guesses she hadn’t sounded that winded when she was lugging those foot lockers up the steps.

Becca stares at them, these drab olive trunks. Her brother’s things. _Both_ of her brothers’ things. They look like they might bite. They feel like a threat.

That’s when she starts to feel it, really feel it, in her bones somewhere. It starts to settle on her, a new weight.

Carter’s red lips go tight and twist to one side. She looks down and blinks hard. She looks back up, composing herself, and reaches into her jacket pocket. “He didn’t get a chance to send this. We were all quite… there was a lot to do.”

It’s a letter, and Becca finds her gaze slipping to one side. The street behind Carter is still littered with trash from the V-E Day celebrations. Becca doesn’t want to look at the letter. She still hasn’t touched the telegrams in the hall. None of them has. They ain’t suspicious, but they’re all afraid to jinx it.

But it’s all coming down anyway. Isn’t it. “They ain’t coming home, are they,”

“I’m so sorry,” Carter says.

Becca lets out a slow breath.

She takes the letter. Reality settles in around her.

The baby is quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was initially written as an In-Comments Ficlet, but I cannot for the life of me find it any-fucking where. 
> 
> UPDATE: I WROTE THIS FOR ICEWHISPER IT’S ALL HER FAULT! Now we know who to blame (it’s still me, but she gave me the idea lol)
> 
> If you're reading this on Sunday, January 20th, then I am happy to report that I am still on track with my ambitious posting schedule, wherein I am going to post something every week from now until Endgame drops. 
> 
> Next week is the Falsworth B-Side, THYP 3.2 "Soul to Waste"


	7. James Montgomery Falsworth: Soul to Waste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This B-Side comes shortly after Chapter 2 of The Terror of Knowing.

Please allow me to introduce myself  
I'm a man of wealth and taste  
I've been around for a long, long year  
Stole many a man's **soul to waste**

\- [Sympathy for the Devil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgnClrx8N2k) by The Rolling Stones, 1968.

 

It's 1968 and Monty is thinking about endings. Perhaps it's because he's meant to have finished and delivered the last chapter of his latest manuscript, and he hasn't. Perhaps it's because MI-13 won't even answer his calls anymore, that's how put out to pasture he is. Perhaps it's because bloody Dernier has gone and gotten himself killed in a car crash, and the sudden knowledge that he won't be seeing the bastard again is sitting in his chest like a lump of sticky black tar.

He stubs his cigarette out and stares through the window. From his desk and typewriter, he can see right down to the lapping, crystalline waters; clear and Caribbean blue. They're practically licking the foundations of his little bungalow. Maybe not the safest place for a retirement home, but he's never been much of one for safe, and the view is simply unparalleled. He supposes there are worse places than Jamaica to be put out to pasture.

He wonders, morbidly, if he'll die here. He's spent so much time traveling, since the war, and just as much time nearly getting himself killed. Istanbul and Cairo, and Hong Kong, and New York -- Berlin, again, most recently, before S told him, bluntly, that he couldn’t stay in the field anymore, he needed to either take a desk job or retire.

So here he is.

Did he survive all those missions only to die here, someday, when he's too old to do anything else? He knows it’s a young man’s game, but he’s only 54. Dugan’s still working, training new recruits, and Carter’s nowhere near finished. Although, neither of them do much field work anymore. And they did offer him a desk job, it's just... He's not ready for that. He's not  _done._

Not that Monty is bitter.

If he’s bitter about anything he’s bitter about this damn chapter which refuses to write itself. The main character (a hopeless wreck of a British intelligence officer flying by the seat of his pants at all times) is supposed to be saving his old war buddy (ex French Resistance, because of course) and according to Monty’s outline, he won’t be able to, which will give him the drive that carries him through the climax of the story but…

Well, sometimes life imitates art a little too closely. Monty finds himself thinking that he should just scrap the whole bloody thing and write children’s books instead.

There’s a crunch of gravel on the drive and Monty turns in his seat, listening, eager for any excuse to get away from this bloody desk.

A car door opens and closes. Monty isn’t expecting anyone today, he notes, and his hand strays towards the revolver strapped under his desk when someone knocks briskly on the door.  It’s a very particular knock; one, and a quick two, and then one more. 

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Barnes had proposed that as a secret knock, and it took three missions for the Captain to figure out that it was the opening cadence to  _Star Spangled Man with a Plan._ By then it was too late; it was practically their callsign. 

Monty lets his fingertips slide off the revolver grip and gets up. He strides across the room and throws open the door, letting in a blast of warm, salty-scented air. She’s standing there in a white shift dress and a wide brimmed hat with striking red sunglasses. She looks not a day over thirty until she whips the dark glasses off and he sees the hard lines that have formed around her warm brown eyes.

“Falsworth,” she says, in the same crisp accent that hasn't changed since 1945.

“Carter,” he replies. “Come in. How the devil are you?”

Carter scans the bungalow, surreptitiously checking for points of egress as she steps in and sweeps off her hat. She tosses it onto a rattan chair by the door. “Well as can be expected. How are Brian and Jackie?”

Monty makes a face. Both his children take after their father a little _too much_ so... “I've no idea what Brian is up to with Roger these days, but Jackie keeps me more or less appraised. As appraised as she can working in the field. I hear she's doing well, making waves. She was always a spitfire. But you probably know better than I do.”

“SHIELD may have a special relationship with MI-13, but it’s not like they give us daily reports.” Peggy checks her watch, hits a button on one side. Monty sees it flash green at her. He knows Stark's tech when he sees it, and he can guess what this one is for.

“I do sweep this place for bugs once a week,” he tells her. “Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

She doesn't even look abashed. “Better safe than sorry.”

“You want some tea?” he asks. “Since I have a feeling we're going to be here a while?”

“I do have some things to discuss with you. But I'd much rather have a cocktail.”

“All I have is vermouth and  vodka I'm afraid.”

Carter’s eyes light up a little. “Is it the stuff Dottie gets?”

Monty picks up the decanter and gives her a _look._ He always decants the stuff Dottie gets because it invariably comes in an old milk jug or something equally disturbing to drink alcohol from. Memorably, once, a piggy bank. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the best vodka money _can’t_ buy. “Who do you take me for? As if I would settle for less.”

“Then a vodka martini will do very nicely, thank you.”

“So what’s all this about then?” Monty asks as he crosses over to the bar.

“What do you think? It’s about Jacques, of course.”

Monty hesitates a moment, and swallows. “The car crash,” he guesses as he pulls the top off the decanter and pours out vodka into the shaker. _“Was_ it a car crash?”

“You may be out of the loop, but in this case? Your guess is as good as mine,” she says. “If it wasn't a car crash, someone went to extraordinary lengths to make it look like one. But you know what they say. If it looks like an accident and quacks like an accident--”

“It might still be enemy action,” Monty finishes. He adds some ice from the bucket and starts shaking.

“Yes, exactly. And everything we have says it _isn't_ the Russians.”

“Everything we have being Dottie?” Monty guesses, as he pours out the drinks.

“She sent me some of the good stuff in a baby bottle, which is Dottie-ese for _I am innocent,”_ Peggy says. She takes the martini with a murmured thank you before continuing. “But despite what she likes to pretend, she doesn’t know everything. And I can't get past the fact that Jacques’ death is damned convenient for someone else and damned inconvenient for me, and usually that means…”

Monty clenches his jaw. “...That it wasn't an accident,” he finishes for her.

Peggy sips her martini and nods. “Yes exactly.”

Monty waves for her to sit where she likes in his little living room, then takes a seat for himself in the massive leather armchair he favors. He honestly doesn't know what bothers him more: the thought of Dernier dying in a mere accident (or at least an accident that didn't involve explosives) or the thought of him being killed by some unknown agent, the possibility of his murderer getting away with it…

He looks up and finds Peggy looking at him. He makes himself give a razor thin smile. “Best to assume it is enemy action, I expect.”

“Nice to see someone else out here is as paranoid as I am,” Peggy says mildly.

Monty lifts his glass in silent toast.

Peggy takes a sip, still watching him like a hawk watches prey. “May I ask you something?”

“Never been able to stop you doing exactly what you want, don't expect to start now.”

“Why did you leave MI-13?”

“Ah.” Monty sets his glass down on the table beside his chair, runs his finger around the rim contemplatively. “They wanted to take me out of the field.”

Peggy hums and props her chin on her hand. “They wanted to give you a promotion, put you in a command position.”

Monty rolls his eyes. “They wanted to put me behind a desk.”

“You _are_ behind a desk.” She waves at his cluttered writing nook. “Not that I don’t enjoy your literary forays, but you can’t tell me this is _more_ exciting than a command position.”

Monty rolls his eyes. “There's a hundred percent less bureaucratic nonsense.”

Peggy levels an even stare at him. “You want to look me in the eye and say that’s the reason?”

Monty looks away. “You’re only saying that because you’re here to offer me Dernier's job.”

That cracks through her cool exterior. She smiles down at her lap, her neatly folded hands and unchipped nail varnish — red, like her lips. It’s still strange for him to see her like this. Even after all this time he expects her to be wearing poorly-fitted fatigues and a leather jacket. When he thinks of her, he thinks of her knee-deep in mud, with a rusty smear of someone’s blood drying on her cheek. That’s Peggy Carter, as he knows her. This pristine persona is someone else entirely. Director Carter in her crisp white linen, looking like Jackie Kennedy on summer hols — it’s not _her._

“Alright, perhaps I am,” she allows. “But that will rather depend.”

“Depend on what?”

Peggy sips her drink and watches keenly. “On whether I decide I can trust you.”

“Ah.” Monty nods. “I see. You think it was an inside job.”

“Don’t you?” Peggy counters.

Monty lifts a brow. “I don’t think I know enough about it to form a theory. Which you knew when you came here, which is why you think you can trust me. I’ve been out of the loop for over a year now.”

“You were invited to that party, too.” She means the one Dernier was leaving when he got into that so-called car crash. “You could have given that information to an assassin.”

Monty doesn’t bother to say _I wouldn’t, he was my friend._ She already knows that, and she hates suspecting him, but she has to. It’s the nature of the work. “I’d no idea that Dernier would make it, though. And you don’t really think I did.”

Peggy purses her lips. “No,” she confirms. “No, I don’t.”

“He was my son’s godfather,” Monty says, and lets the ache he feels bleed through into his voice. “Christ. I named my daughter after the tosser.” He scrubs his hands over his face and up into his hair. “And now you’re telling me...” He shakes his head. “If it wasn’t the Russians, who do you think it was?”

“I’m not certain," she says. “There’s something happening under my nose, and I don’t like it.” She sighs and lets her head fall back against the chair. “Or maybe there’s nothing going on and I’m just as paranoid as they say.”

“Well they don’t pay you to be less than hyper-vigilant.”

She lifts her head to look at him. “I hate suspecting you.”

“After everything you’ve seen — mind control, alien artifacts, supersoldiers, _Howard Stark_ — it pays to be a little suspicious.”

She makes a regretful face. “The age of supersoldiers is well and truly past, I think.”

Monty suddenly feels very old and very tired. “And it’s just poor suckers like you and me left picking up the pieces, is it?”

“So it seems, Monty darling.” She takes another sip of her cocktail. “I want someone I can trust running the European offices,” she says, suddenly brisk and abrupt. “Will you do it?”

“You’ve decided I’m trustworthy?”

She gives a rueful little laugh. “You’re as trustworthy as I am, Monty. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Monty can tell what’s coming, and there’s no way to escape it. Not this time. She’s going to pin him down and _make_ him answer. But he delays the inevitable, widens his eyes and feigns innocence. “What question is that?”

She narrows her gaze, and there’s the hardness in her; there’s Director Carter. It’s not really a persona, is it. It’s who she’s become. She may still contain the Peggy Carter he knew back in the war, but she’s also this person now.

“In 1942, a young British officer was put in command perhaps a little too quickly for his own good,” she says, relentless. “Perhaps he made a mistake, perhaps he didn’t—"

Monty looks away and scoffs. He’s not going to argue this point, he already knows that it was his mistake, as much as people have tried to tell him otherwise. There’s no point arguing it.

“—Either way, his whole unit got killed, and he ended up in a labor camp in Kreischberg. And he never took a command position again.”

Monty stares at a bead of condensation making its way down the stem of his martini glass. “You’re here to ask how long I’m going to punish myself for a mistake I made 26 years ago.”

“No,” she says, sharp. “I’m not your girlfriend, I’m not here to _coddle_ you. I’m here to ask how long you intend to use that as an excuse to avoid your responsibilities.”

Monty looks up, a little taken aback.

“I need you running the European office,” she says, not beating about the bush now. “I need _you,_ because you’re the only one I’m sure isn’t compromised. Dernier wanted you as his second in command as soon as you left MI-13—” she wields that statement like the knife it is, and aims straight for the heart “—but he knew you wouldn’t take the post.”

“He knew me well,” Monty mutters.

“He needed you, and you weren’t there,” she says, absolutely ruthless, as she always was. Monty has sudden sympathy for that one Nazi he watched her kill with a shoestring. He imagines it felt rather like this. “SHIELD needs you now. _We_ need you. Howlies are supposed to stick together. Aren’t we?”

Monty swallows thickly and thinks of Dernier, in that church the day Brian was baptized, and Brian shouting at him, the last time they spoke. _You always do this, you always back away from taking charge, when are you going to step up?_

“Come on, Monty,” Peggy says, impatient. “You made a mistake. You made another mistake.” He looks up and sees her leaning forward, cocktail abandoned as she presses her advantage. There’s fire in her brown eyes. She reminds him of the Captain so much at times like this. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

Monty is nothing if not a cool customer. He lifts his glass. “Salut,” he says, and drains it. He stands up, crosses over to his desk, his typewriter, the open window. He looks at the unfinished page. Art really does imitate life a little too closely sometimes.  

And then, in true Howling Commando fashion, he takes the path of maximum drama. The typewriter flies out the open window and sails heavily through the air for a moment before landing with a splash in the surf.

He turns back to Carter, feeling lighter, freer, younger than he has in years.

“When do I start?”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still on track with my mad posting schedule -- Next week is the first of Natasha's B-Sides, and I've begun my reread of THYP, so if through the course of the series you've spotted any typos or continuity errors that my beta and I missed, now is the time to point them out lol.
> 
> (actually, any time is the time, i'm one of those rare writing creatures who actually really likes getting feedback, whether it's positive or negative ;) )


	8. Natalia Romanova: You Play Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Natasha Met Actual Human Disaster Clint Barton, and Became A Real Girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This B--Side happens between Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of The Terror of Knowing (not that you need to have read that to enjoy this, it just gives you some backstory ;) )

**_You play forgiveness_ **  
_Watch it now_  
_Here he comes_  
  
_He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus_  
_But he talks like a gentleman_  
_Like you imagined_   
_When you were young_

_-“When You Were Young” by The Killers, 2006._

 

* * *

 

_My name is --_

_I am the middle child of five --_

_No._

_I am one of twenty eight girls training with the --_

_The Bolshoi --_

_No._

_The Red Room._

_One of twenty eight girls taken from the warmth of their parents. One of five who survived the treatments. And now..._

_I am the only one left._

 

* * *

 

It is October 2006 when Crazy Archer Guy brings her in instead of killing her.

He’s here with her now, in the back of the armored truck, sitting on the bench opposite. There's no one else, which means they believe that he can take her out, if necessary.

Having spent the last month trying to outmaneuver him, she believes it too.

She hasn’t moved since they latched the cuffs around her arms and legs. She breathes in, breathes out. She tenses her muscles only enough to stay upright when the truck goes over a bump.

“Hey uh...” the crazy man says. She doesn’t look up from her hands, the cuffs on her wrists, her knees. “Aw, names. You got a name?” He asks.

She blinks. She thinks about it, then looks up without moving her head, just lifts her eyes to him.

He has a piece of surgical tape across his nose, another holding the skin over his eyebrow together. His blonde hair is reddish with dried blood on one side. She's pretty bruised and battered herself, she can feel the throb of all her injuries, pulsing in time with her heart. She doesn’t say anything.

He puts his hand -- left hand, two middle fingers taped together -- flat on his chest. “I’m Clint,” he says, and then--

His right hand moves. Five distinct gestures, and she recognizes that it must be sign language, her brain decoding it. C-L-I-N-T, it must be. She categorizes the gestures. She’ll remember them. Must be American Sign Language. Nothing like the coded hand signals they used at the Red Room.

Crazy Archer -- who is apparently called Clint -- winces, and lets his hand fall. “Sorry,” he says. “Thought you might -- that blast did a number on my hearing aid, but I didn’t know if you could… but yeah, you wouldn’t know ASL, would you. And I don’t know Russian Sign Language, or, uh, Evil Russian Spy Sign Language so…”

Her brow furrows, just for a split second before she gets control of herself. She didn't expect the man who successfully dogged her steps across three countries to be so… awkward. She's didn't expect him to be deaf either, but then… the only other man she knows of who can beat her hand-to-hand is a one armed amnesiac with brain damage, so she's not in the habit of underestimating people, no matter how disabled they may appear to be.

“I speak English,” she says, in her pitch perfect American accent. “My ears are fine.”

He tips his left ear closer. Which makes sense. The explosion was on his right side. She can’t see a hearing aid, but SHIELD would have sent the best of the best, and he would have the best equipment -- stuff not yet available to the public. “I know you speak English. You said. With the _I surrender_ and the _I want to defect_ and the _I have information on the Red Room_. That was good.”

_I want to defect…_ She remembers the words on her lips, making herself say them, clear and carrying. She swallows back a sudden rush of nausea. She looks down again at her hands, her knees, the cuffs. She breathes in. She breathes out.

“Hey, um. Listen, if I were you, I would be freaking out. And you don’t… you don’t look like you’re freaking out? But I know that doesn’t always mean you’re not? Freaking out?”

She blinks and looks back up at him. Expressionless.

He winces. “I’m just. You’ve got no reason to trust me, or any of us, but I--”

There's a loud, angry buzz from the bag between Clint's feet. He jumps, which makes her jump, and then she registers that the buzzing is a silenced phone, not a bomb. Clint scrabbles at his bag. A mess of arrows fall out. One of them hits the ground point down, and the point bursts open and spills fine mesh netting all over the floor. A net arrow, for taking bad guys alive.

It must have been meant for her.

She pulls up her cuffed legs, pulls them up and in and watches in horrified fascination as this man -- this _grown-ass man_ , who _outmaneuvered a Widow --_ scrabbles through the netting, swearing and fumbling, until he comes up with a little black flip-phone. He stays on his knees on the floor of the van, opens the phone and brings it to his ear.

“Barton,” he says. And then transfers the phone to his left ear. _Because he forgot that he's deaf,_ she guesses, awestruck. She's seen the Soldier take 10 kV to the cranium and come out less of a mess than this 20 car pile of a human being.

“Babe?” Crazy Archer Guy says. He forfeited the right to have a _name_ when he revealed _to a Widow_ that _he has a significant other._ No matter how obliquely, he’s supposed to be _the best of the best._ He should _know better._ To be fair, she's probably never going to see the light of day again, but still --

“Hold on, slow down. Are you okay?” Crazy Archer Guy is saying, while she quietly spirals deeper into madness. “What--” and then his face goes sheet-white.

On the bench, she goes tense, pulling her knees tight to her chest. Breathe in. Breathe out. She’s too far gone with stress and adrenaline backwash to stop the way her heart is thundering, but she can control her god damn breathing.

Crazy Archer Guy makes a strange wheezing sound. He puts his hand over his mouth. Her arms are shaking where she’s holding them tight around her knees.

“I’m fine,” Clint squeaks down the line. “Oh my god. I’m so -- are you? Jesus. This is really happening isn’t it. Okay, okay, we got this. We can do this. This--”

His eyes track up to her face, wide as saucers, white showing all the way around the blue.

He is as scared as she is, for some reason.

She loses the ability to control her breathing.

“Okay, this looks bad,” he says. “No -- oh Jesus, no, honey, not you, that’s the best fucking -- shit, can I call you back? I’m in a truck full of spies and we’re all having panic attacks now. No I got it. Love you too.”

He hangs up.

She scowls at him. “I am _not,”_ she says, her words going all Russian on the vowels. She closes her mouth tight.

Clint gives her a pretty condescending look. Which is pretty fucking rich from a guy who just accidentally set off one of his own trick arrows while trying to answer his phone. “Yeah you definitely are. It’s cool. I am too. So you and me are going to sit here on this bench and just freak the fuck out for a minute, okay? Because I really need to-- yeah. Breathing exercises, let’s do--”

And then he does exactly fucking that, pulling himself up into the bench beside her and tapping out his breaths on his knee. She follows the motion of his steady trigger finger, and matches her breath to it. They do wheezy but coordinated breathing together until they’ve both stopped shaking. She puts her feet back down on the truck bed.

He rummages around in his bag full of arrows, then comes up with a little flask. He takes a long pull, then offers it to her, then abruptly pulls it back. “Shit,” he says. “How old are you, kid?”

She can smell bourbon on his breath and god does she want a swig. She gives him a look.

“Hey, you've got one of those faces, you know? You could be 32 or you could be twelve, and I can't just go around giving alcohol to minors anymore. Fuck.”

She doesn’t even have to lie. “I’m 21.”

“Oh good. I mean, geeze, this is probably still terrible but uh…” he helps her take a sip. Her hands are still cuffed. Maybe he’s not completely stupid.

“Thanks,” she says, and looks back at her knees. Breathe in, breathe out. “Why can't you go around giving alcohol to minors anymore?”

“Well... I’m going to be a father?” he says.

She almost chokes on the next measured breath. “You what?”

He grimaces. “Yeah I know. But hey. It’s good. It’s…” He takes another, longer swig of the bourbon. “I’ve been doing this--” he waves a hand at himself, the truck, the trick arrows “--for ten years, and I was a freaking-- freaking _crime carnie_ for about twenty years before that and now--”

“Crime carnie?” She says.

He nods. He looks over at her, smiles. “Yeah. SHIELD took me in. Gave me a chance to live a better life, make a difference, do some good. And now…” He shakes his head. “Now I'm going to be a dad. Jesus.”

She stares at him. “Con… gratulations?”

“Thanks, but… I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared in my entire damn life.” He shakes his head. “That's not the point, though. I just mean. I've been there.” He points to her hands, cuffed in her lap. “I mean literally. Could’ve even been the same armored car, actually. We don't get new equipment as often as you might think. I have been in your shoes. And now I'm going to be a father. So I'm just… whatever your brain gremlins are telling you… This ain't the end, kiddo.”

She wrinkles her brow at him. He winces.

“Ah geeze. You're 21 years old and I called you kiddo. I really _am_ turning into a dad. Sorry. I guess I should, um. Call you. Um.” He rubs his forehead, bumps his broken nose, grimaces. “Aw names,” he says again.

She blinks at him, then… she nudges his leg with her knee. “Natasha,” she tells him. “You can call me Natasha.”

 

* * *

 

_My name is Natalia Alienovna Romanova._

_I was many things. Ballerina, martial artist, foreign exchange student, KGB, translator, spy, model, assassin._

_I am a defector._

 

* * *

 

They take her to a secure facility somewhere. She doesn’t know where, and the not knowing makes her so anxious she can’t sleep for three days straight when they first bring her there. It’s a prison, but a nice one. It’s a hospital, too, just for people with unusual problems. She has a lot of unusual problems.

She also has a lot of useful information, and as per the deal she made with Agent Coulson, she tells them everything she knows.

That is a lie.

She tells them everything they need to know. Which is most everything. She keeps a very few things to herself, because they are _hers_ , and no one else’s.

She tells them about Sao Paulo, but she doesn’t tell them what happened to Yelena, or how she was never the same after, or how she was gone long before she disappeared on that mission in Romania.

She tells them about the children’s ward, the hospital fire, and what she did to Anya, but she doesn’t tell them about the year before that, when she and Anya had been in a safehouse in Switzerland and they’d spent hours just holding each other and not making any promises they knew they couldn’t keep.

She tells them that she had training, but she says nothing about who trained her. She says nothing about Mishka, about Drakov’s daughters.

These things are _hers,_ and no one else’s.

 

Crazy Archer Clint comes to visit her. At first, he stays on the other side of the glass. He is not allowed to tell her anything sensitive, or even be in the same room as her, but he still comes and talks. For the first three months, she says nothing in reply. He tells her about this completely idiotic show called Dog Cops. He tells her about his childhood, and his brother Barney, who’s trying to get clean. He tells her about the latest insane thing his very pregnant wife has done.

He pretends not to notice that she’s clawing at the walls, regretting every decision she’s ever made, very crazy, borderline suicidal, and not sure that she’ll ever be allowed out of this fucking cage.

The first thing she says to him, after “My name is Natasha” and then three months of silence, is “Oh my _god,_ will you _please shut the fuck up.”_

His reply is a cheery: “Nope!” and then forty five minutes about Olympic archery and why it’s complete bullshit anyway, he didn’t even _want_ to be on the team, not really.

 

The deprogramming process is extremely unpleasant. They have to find all her trigger phrases -- which she can’t remember -- and deactivate the myriad kill switches embedded in her body and brain. It involves surgery, therapy, and a lot of disgusting, unpleasant things. It’s grueling, and nerve-wracking, like defusing a bomb, except the bomb is _her_ and the defusing process takes the better part of a year.

When she’s finally cleared to leave her cell, the first thing Clint does is sling an arm around her shoulder and subject her to a solid hour of baby pics while they get her new papers in order.

 

* * *

 

_What name do you want on your birth certificate?_

_Natasha Romanoff, I guess._

 

* * *

 

She fully expects that the price of relative freedom will be SHIELD recruiting her. She doesn’t expect to have a choice about this, and sure enough there’s some guy called Sitwell waiting outside with recruitment papers. She’s halfway through filling them out when the door of the interrogation room bursts open and Colonel Fury comes in.

She had a dossier on him, back in the Red Room, but she’s never seen him before. The blurry surveillance photos really didn’t do justice to the intensity of his one-eyed stare. He fixes a beady eye on Sitwell.

“Sir--” Sitwell starts.

Fury just points at the door. “Out.”

Sitwell leaves, and Fury takes his seat. He pulls the recruitment papers out of her fingers. “The infamous Black Widow. Pleasure to meet you.” He flips through the pages.

“Nicholas J Fury,” Natasha says, leaning back a little in her seat.

“That’s what they call me,” Fury says, without looking up. He delicately pulls out one of the sheets and then sets it aside. He kicks over the metal waste bin and pulls out a lighter. He lights the rest of the packet on fire and dumps it in the bin. Then he slides the single sheet across the table to her. “That’s all you need,” he says.

Natasha very carefully does not react. She looks at the page. She narrows her eyes. “This is… witness protection,” she says slowly.

“You are a witness. Granted, you can probably protect yourself, but we’d like to help.”

She skims over it, expecting there will be check-in requirements, maybe an agreement to wear a tracking device. There’s nothing like that. It’s all the services SHIELD agrees to provide her if she wants. A stipend, if she lIke’s. Legal help, if she wants. Access to safe houses, if she needs. “What’s the catch?”

Nick scoots the burning trashcan slightly further from the table as the flames lick up high and then start to die down. “The catch is you tell us everything you know about your former employers. Oh wait. You already did that.”

“You don’t want the Black Widow on your payroll,” Natasha says. She isn’t buying it. 

“Of course we want the Black Widow on our payroll, everyone wants the Black Widow on their payroll.” Nick shrugs. “But I’ve seen what you do to organizations that employ you against your will.” He tips his head to the side. “And they pay me to plan for the long term. I’m a big picture kinda guy.”

Natasha stares at him and tries to figure out his angle. Slowly, without taking her eyes off him, she picks up the pen and pulls the sheet closer.

“If you’re the kind of agent we want working for us, you’ll come to us in your own time,” Nick says. “And if you don’t, you’re not the kind of agent we need.”

Natasha narrows her eyes, but in the end it’s just a fake name on a piece of paper. Not much harm in that. She scribbles _Natasha Romanoff_ and puts _NR_ on the bits that need additional confirmation.

Fury picks up the paper and slides it into her file. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Romanoff.”

“Why don’t you just bury me, if you’ve got what you want?” she asks, bluntly. She could put on the eyes, sign a different piece of paper, get into their ranks and lie to them all. They’d trust her implicitly within six months. But SHIELD has nothing she wants, now, so why bother?

Nick stands up. “Barton vouched for you,” he says. “That’s good enough for me.”

And sure enough, Barton is waiting outside the interrogation room with a friendly smile and _even more baby pictures._

 

Clint lets her stay at his brownstone in New York. Charles, the surly building manager, is ex-military. He has Clint’s blond hair and blue eyes, but none of his easygoing nature. Clint calls him “Barney,” and Charles calls Clint “Francis.” It seems like half the people who live there are probably more or less like Natasha. “Barton's Home for Wayward Crazies” she starts calling it, in her head.

After three weeks, she runs away.

She's back within a week, when it becomes clear that no one is coming after her, that no one will.

She’d just… needed to know.

 

A few weeks afree that, Clint comes to see her. He’s got a lollipop in his mouth and his feet on her coffee table. He pulls the sweet out of mouth with a noisy pop. It’s purple, and she can smell the fake grape flavor from here. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she says, and drops her groceries on the counter, next to the takeout boxes. “How’s the brat.” He’s going to tell her anyway, she might as well get it over with.

Barton grins. “He climbed on top of the refrigerator last week. We still don’t know how.”

“At least you know he’s your son.”

“So I’ve got an op in Tel Aviv,” Barton says.

“You shouldn’t tell me that,” Natasha scolds. “You’ve got no respect for opsec.” Then a thought occurs to her. She whips her head around and narrows her eyes at him. “Unless you want me to come.”

“It’s not really in Tel Aviv, it’s in Marrakesh,” Barton says. He puts the lollipop back in his mouth and keeps talking around it. “I don’t want you to come, but Laura could use a hand.”

 

* * *

 

_Oh you must be Clint’s friend. Nice to meet you._

_… You must be Laura._

 

* * *

 

She never stays in one place too long, and she’s still living on the cash she took on her way out of the Red Room. She takes odd part-time work when she feels like it. It’s fun to pretend to be normal, as long as she can pretend to be three different normal people at the same time. She takes modeling gigs and collects degrees via the internet (and also her impressive hacking/forging skills.) Every once in a while she remembers something important, or stumbles across someone she recognizes in the papers. Whenever that happens, she drops a line to Clint, who passes it along to Fury.

She spars with Clint to keep in shape, and breaks into banks just to see if she’s still got it. (She does.) But she also learns what flavors of ice cream are the best, what kinds of music she likes, and the intricacies of Dog Cops. She learns patty-cake and gets a little _too_ into legos and develops a ferocious Mario Kart addiction.

It’s like she’s a person. A person who sometimes wakes up in the black of night from dreams of blood and cold. a Person whose hands are drenched in blood. There isn’t enough soap in the world to make her clean again, but she’s still a _person_ , she gets to have _ice cream_ if she fucking wants it.

On her worst nights she dreams of a face, blue and still as death. She left him there. _She left him behind,_ and she hasn’t gone looking. She knows it would be a futile effort. He’s probably in deep storage. He’s probably not even in Russia anymore. And even if she found him, the best future he could look forward to would a long time in a very small box. Still. It’s hard not to think: _I don’t deserve this, I should’ve gotten him out too._

But that just makes her feel _more_ like a person, strangely.

 

* * *

 

_What the hell is he saying?_

_He’s saying “Auntie Nat.”_

 

* * *

 

She babysits the kids when Clint’s on mission. And in the end, that’s what gets her. Because somewhere along the line, she starts actually caring about Crazy Archer Guy, and he’s a _moron_ who does things like _jump off buildings_ and thinks his silly grappling hook arrows are going to stop him from _breaking half the bones in his body._

Laura is with the kids, because she’s their mom and it’s Nat’s turn to keep watch.

Clint stirs, and grunts and opens the eye that isn’t swollen shut. Nat doesn’t move an inch. Clint’s gaze slides from the ceiling to the heart monitor to the ex-assassin standing at the foot of his bed.

Natasha narrows her eyes.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “This looks bad.”

“I’m ready to come in,” Natasha says. “Clearly, you need someone watching your back.”

“Aw no!” Clint says. “You don’t have to--”

“I nend to tell you some things first. Just you.”

Clint’s eye goes wide. “Tell me what?”

Natasha takes a breath. It’s time. She needs to let this go (a little.) “I need to tell you about Anya, and Yelena, and Mishka.”

“Wait.” Clint makes a valiant effort to sit up, fails, and then tries just as hard to look serious and attentive. “You don’t need to tell me anything.”

“I want to.”

“I already trust you, you don’t have to prove--”

“You’re not the only one who might need backup someday. Just... listen, okay?”

Clint listens.

 

“Welcome to SHIELD,” Fury says.

Natasha lets the corner of her mouth lift slightly. “Thank you, sir.”

He claps her on the shoulder, and for a moment she thinks of a different hand on her shoulder -- a metal one. She’s got a better chance of finding him from the inside. And maybe, just maybe, SHIELD will do for him what they’ve done for her. That’s probably naive of her.

She shouldn’t think of it that way. SHIELD is an organization, and organizations can never be fully trusted. But from the inside of SHIELD, maybe she can do for Mishka what Barton did for her. She _can_ trust herself, at least.

“You know, I thought you’d never join up.” Fury is clearly pleased, though. But he’s a big picture guy, like he said. He thinks long term. Two years is a pretty long time to delay gratification.

“Well I was starting to get bored,” Natasha drawls.

“We’ve got plenty of work for you here, Agent Romanoff.”

 

* * *

 

_What’s your name lady?_

_Rushman. Natalie Rushman_

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is another Natasha B-Side: the prelude for FFS. Also, FYI I've been tweaking the formatting and doing minor edits and fixing links on THYP -- so far I've gotten through parts one and two.


	9. Nat: Love Lost Believers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Vs. Ice Husbands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent Romanoff says: “There was quite the buzz around here, finding you...” and not much else of consequence. That’s deliberate, he knows. She watches him, and there's something in her eyes. Like she’s measuring him to some standard. Like he might be useful to her, later. Peggy had looked at him like that, once upon a time. It had made him want to stand a little straighter, go a little farther, a little faster.
> 
> Now, he just wants to get this over with.
> 
> (from Fool For Sacrifice, Chapter 1)

_Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_  
_Lost in the pages of self made cages_  
_Life slips away and the ghosts come to play_  
_These are hard times_  
_These are hard times for dreamers_  
_And **love lost believers**_

_-[Bones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDpdpE00rfI) by MS MR, 2012. _

 

“Briefing room, now,” Clint says as he blows past.

Natasha hasn’t even put her gear down. It’s, like, 4 am, and she’s just gotten back from the ass end of Mongolia, and now there’s a briefing.

Spectacular.

When she gets to the briefing room, still smelling faintly of horse and plane, Coulson is there, vibrating gently in place with the manic giddiness he usually reserves for talking about his cellist or his Captain America memorabilia. She’s too tired to deduce which one it is.

“Alright, we’ve got a situation in the Arctic,” Fury says, coming in with an arm full of briefing packets. He tosses them down on the table. “And it’s some real weird bullshit.”

Natasha perks up. ‘Bullshit’ is the Fury equivalent of Yellow Alert -- so, not too bad -- and the last time anything was ‘real weird,’ Tony Stark had just strapped himself into a tin can and started firing rockets at terrorists. (The whole New Mexico situation had been “some goddamn fuckery.”) So. This could actually be fun.

Fury slides them their briefings. It has the Avengers Initiative stamp in the top corner, and inside…

Inside is a photocopy of an old file. A _really old_ file.

“Steve Rogers,” she reads, and scrunches up her nose.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who Captain America is,” Clint says. “You’re going to make Coulson explode.”

“Am sad Soviet orphan,” Nat retorts, going into her cartooniest Russki accent. “American history -- очень странно.”

Fury is rolling his eyes, and Coulson does, indeed, look like he’s about to explode, but in his minimalist way. His face isn’t moving or anything, he looks as mild as ever, but she can tell. There’s a glint in his eyes.

“But seriously, are you telling us you _found Steve Rogers’ body?”_ Clint says.

A strange sound burbles out of Coulson’s closed mouth. It’s… a giggle.

Fury sighs and glances briefly upward, seeking strength. “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.” He gives them all a deeply pained look. “He’s not dead.”

Natasha’s eyebrows shoot up.

“That’s… that’s a hell of a serum they gave him,” Clint says.

“Tell me about it,” Fury mumbles.

Natasha remembers her briefing on Ross's work with Banner: their notes on the Hulk, and the very dramatically named _Abomination._ She remembers her own experiences with Mishka -- her suspicions -- and lets her hair slip down to hide her face out of habit. She doesn't like to think about Mishka where anyone else can observe her expression. She flips to the next page of the briefing and…

Her focus narrows in. Everything else fades out.

If she were someone else, someone who wasn’t trained to recognize faces, someone who wasn't trained to make split-second judgment calls, someone who hadn’t been practically _raised by him,_ she might not have recognized the man looking out from the sepia photograph. Second from the right. He looks like he’s walked through hell, which is too fucking familiar, but his hair is short and his stance is so easy and relaxed. The whole time she knew him, he stood balanced on the balls of his feet, prepared to lash out in any direction, shoulders hunched. There was always a promise of violence in him, of danger, and he broadcast that to everyone who so much as glanced his way.

It was a performance. Like everything else. Like this -- the man in the sepia photograph, looking too easy, too relaxed. She knows a performance when she sees it.

The last time she saw him was through a tiny porthole window. His baffled blue eyes, always so sad. The dimple on his chin. And then the surprise of freezing, all of him turning blue, riming over with frost, like a corpse in a morgue.

“--survives the defrosting,” Clint is pointing out. “And that’s gotta be a big if.”

Natasha suppresses her own urge to giggle hysterically. _If he survives the defrosting._ If Mishka’s serum was half what Rogers got, she’s pretty fucking sure Rogers will be fine. Maybe some light amnesia at first, if they don't keep him in a coma through the process.

She flips through, pretending to be absorbed in the briefing, intent on finding -- she flips past the file on Carter, on Dernier and the older Stark, until...

There he is again. He looks exactly the same, and so much younger, all at once. He’s in his uniform, and he’s _smiling._

 _Barnes, James Buchanan. Sergeant._  

She knows that name. It's on the wall of valor at SHIELD. She never bothered to ask about it -- it didn't seem relevant. He died in WWII, it was ancient history.

He's been right under her nose the whole time.  _The whole time._

_32557038._

_Born Brooklyn NY 10 March 1917._

_KIA The Brenner Pass 19 February 1945._

She wants to take a red pen to it, scribble out that date. At least change the K to an M.

“--you two in because if anyone knows something about adjusting to a new world…”

Natasha looks up, and finds everyone staring at her. “Hm?” she says.

Clint frowns. It’s not like her to zone out in a briefing.

“He’s going to be confused.” And it’s Coulson talking now, seeming slightly more in control of himself. “We don’t know how he’ll react to the future. He’ll need someone to help him adjust. Guide him through that transition.”

Natasha stares. They're all staring back, expectant. “And you think _I’m_ a good choice for that?”

Fury glances to Coulson, then back at Nat. “We think you’re the _only_ choice for that. We don’t have many operatives who’ve had to rebuild from the ground up to the extent that you have.”

“No,” Natasha says.

“It’s going to be a bit different, but the principles are the same,” Coulson insists. "He's lost everything. He's might as well be from another planet."

“No, I mean, no thank you, sir. I won't do that.”

“You wouldn’t be his handler, you’d be a support system,” Coulson says. He knows how much she hates taking handler jobs. The whole Tony Stark situation had been such a fucking nightmare.

“No,” she says again. She can’t. She _wo_ _n’t._ She’d be looking at _him,_ and seeing _Mishka,_ and _wondering._

She has three secrets from SHIELD: three things that Clint knows, but even Fury doesn’t. Three things she never told them about, when she defected. She never told them about Sao Paulo and Yelena. She never told them about the hospital fire, about Anya. And she never told them about Drakov Baranovsky, about Mishka, about _the Winter Soldier._ She’s not going to start now, and she won’t be able to keep that secret if she’s babysitting Captain Goddamn America while he’s grieving for his best buddy, James Buchanan Barnes. Боже мой.

She closes the file. “I’m sorry sir, but I won’t take this assignment. Find someone else.”

 

* * *

 

Clint comes to find her after the briefing, as she knew he would.

“Hey,” he says, and walks beside her until they stop in a camera dead spot. Clint may be a human disaster, but he isn’t actually stupid. “What happened in there?”

Natasha sighs. “It’s… complicated.”

“Is it important?”

 _Only the most important thing that’s happened since I left the Red Room._ She nods, tersely.

Clint shrugs. “Then tell me.”

She shakes her head. “Not here. Not now.”

“Then let’s--”

Natasha sighs. _“You’ve_ got to get to Selvig's lab, and _I’ve_ got to get to Russia. It’s important, but it’ll keep until the next time we’re in the same damn country, Barton.” 

It'll keep. That's an understatement. She knows there's no point trying to trace him, not now, not while he's on ice. Any leads are going to be years out of date. She's always known she'll have to wait for him to resurface -- like he did in 2009 -- but this time, when he does, she'll need to be ready to drop everything and  _go get him back._

“Is it something the boss needs to know about?” Barton asks.

 _The boss_ is not Fury. Duh. _The boss_ is Laura, because she’s the only person they both trust completely to be a touchstone to how Normal, Rational People Should Behave.

“Maybe,” Natasha allows. “We’ll talk about it after I get back, yeah?”

“Alright.” Clint throws her a little half-salute. “Good luck.”

Natasha scoffs. “I have never needed luck in my life and I do not intend to start now.”

 

* * *

 

Clint, on the other hand, never quite seems to have enough good luck, so Natasha doesn’t get the chance to talk to him before she gets the phone call from Coulson telling her that Barton’s been compromised.

She goes through the Russians like a bullet through tissue paper and recruits Bruce Banner with all the elegance of a blue whale doing a belly flop but hey, it fucking _works._ And it means she’s free to be where Barton is most likely to turn up: i.e. the Helicarrier. If Loki is using him, he’ll know where Barton can be most effective, and that’s by using SHIELD’s protocols against them.

Unfortunately this also puts Natasha exactly where she didn’t want to be when this whole mess started, i.e. on the Helicarrier. With Steve Rogers. AKA Captain America. AKA the only man in the world who maybe misses Mishka more than she does. There are so many things that could give away her secret -- _their_ secret. She's been thinking about it, and she can't bring Rogers in on it. For starters, she doesn't trust him, but more importantly he's  _Captain Goddamn America_ _,_ the last thing she needs is to bring him on board this mission. Rescuing Mishka -- or James Buchanan Barnes, whatever -- is going to require stealth and a low profile. Captain America wears a target on his back _professionally._

And yes, alright. She's scared. She can admit that she avoids thinking about Mishka, and it's going to be hard to look at Rogers without thinking of him. If she looks at Rogers too long -- if she thinks about Mishka too much, that blue face, those lost, confused eyes -- there's a chance she's going to lose it and start burning through Russian bases just to get some damn answers. And that scares her. Nothing scares her like the thought of losing control of herself.

But she’s never been one to do anything other than walk directly at the things that scare her the most. It's not great for her mental health, according to the boss, but she does it anyway.

So when Fury says: “They’re starting the face trace up on the bridge,” Natasha immediately says: “I’ll go get Coulson,” even though they could literally just call him.

The quinjet is landing as she steps out onto the deck, and she strides out across the hot tar to meet it. The rear hatch opens and there he is. Captain America, with his plaid shirt tucked into his grey slacks and a leather jacket he could have stolen from a nursing home. He’s squinting around the helicarrier deck, his blond hair falling across his forehead. All those photos of him scowling, all the footage of him smiling, and they never captured this quintessential fact:

 _This complete dork is the most effective tactical asset SHIELD ever produced,_ she reminds herself. Nevermind that it’s comically difficult to look dorkier than Phil Coulson when you’re literally standing right next to him.

Maybe the dorkiness is a serum side effect, she muses, thinking of the other serum-enhanced dork ambling around the Helicarrier like a lost puppy.

But there’s something jangling at the back of Natasha’s brain the whole time she’s watching Steve Rogers. She’s trained to assess people on sight. She knows the Soldier, and now she knows that the Soldier is James Buchanan Barnes and she’s trying to draw the parallels, connect the dots. They were best friends, apparently. There must be parallels. But -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- the dots she’s connecting aren’t the ones she expects.

Steve Rogers steps off the quinjet, and smiles, and Nat can tell.

She knows a performance when she sees it.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have officially cleared all of the WIP B-Sides out of my WIP stack so I am calling these Done-zo for Now. zo.
> 
> still, I am not above taking suggestions -- No promises, but if you've got an idea for a B -Side, there's always a chance that the fickle bitch who is My Muse could be persuaded to get in line and come up with something.
> 
> Next week I get to start posting my piece for the Stucky AU Bang: _sidereal_ which is 62k, three chapters, and beautiful art by verbalatte. 
> 
> (and oh yeah, around March 10, I start posting THYP 6). So it's actually (pretty much) fluff from here till Endgame drops. Which i know is out of character for me. what can i say, i have hidden depths.


End file.
